channel4.com - ORIGINATION

Channel4.com Text Only

[ Text Only: Homepage ]
[ Graphical: Channel4 Homepage ]

Channel 4.com - Origination - text only

The rich mix of British culture and history

[ Text Only: Homepage ]
[ Graphical: Channel4 Homepage ]

FEATURES

Javelin9 JSP compilation error Compilation of JSP File '/culture/microsites/O/origination/SSI/options_t.jsp' failed:

options_t.jsp:3:5: No tag library could be found with this URI. Possible causes could be that the URI is incorrect, or that there were errors during parsing of the .tld file.
<%@ taglib uri="/WEB-INF/tlds/origination.tld" prefix="origination" %>
    ^----^
options_t.jsp:3:5: No tag library could be found with this URI. Possible causes could be that the URI is incorrect, or that there were errors during parsing of the .tld file.
<%@ taglib uri="/WEB-INF/tlds/origination.tld" prefix="origination" %>
    ^----^

Immigration

Writer: David Rosenberg

The Aliens Act

The issue of immigration is rarely out of the headlines. With a General Election approaching, the major parties are trying to convince the electorate that they will be 'firmer' and 'tougher' on immigration.

In 1968, Enoch Powell, a Conservative politician, became infamous for anti-immigrant speeches. He predicted 'rivers of blood' if immigration continued. But Enoch Powell was not the first British politician to stoke up these fears.

At the turn of the 20th century, tens of thousands of Jews, fleeing poverty and persecution in Eastern Europe, arrived at Britain's shores. Another Conservative politician, Major William Evans-Gordon led the clamour for restriction. He claimed, 'A storm is brewing which, if it is allowed to burst, will have deplorable results'.

To limit the number of Jews settling here, Britain passed its first immigration law – the Aliens Act of 1905.

On the 100th anniversary of this act, Origination looks at the myths and reality of Britain's experience of immigration.

An immigrant land

Many people see immigration as a modern British issue. They assume Britain was a largely homogenous society until mass public transport enabled people from other lands to settle here in large numbers.

This is a myth. Most white British people are derived not from Neolithic tribes of Britons but from successive waves of invaders and settlers: Romans, Normans, Vikings and Anglo-Saxons came from what are today Italy, France, Norway and Germany.

Since medieval times monarchs claimed a royal prerogative to 'expel foreigners'. In the late 18th and 19th centuries Home secretaries were granted the power to deport foreigners 'for the peace and security of the realm'.

Black Britannia

Old Britannia was multicultural. African soldiers served in the invading Roman army. Troops defending Hadrian's Wall in the 3rd century AD included a division of 'moors'. In the early 16th century a group of Africans were attached to King James's court. Africans and Asians have been British -born as early as the 1500s.

Thousands of young Africans were brought to Britain as domestic slaves, while Britain was involved in the African slave trade. A portrait of Queen Elizabeth I in 1575 shows her with a group of Black musicians and dancers. Her attitude towards them later hardened, and in 1596 she regretted that 'several blackamoores have lately been brought into this realm of which kind of people there are already too much here'. She tried unsuccessfully to expel them.

Romany-speaking Gypsies from northern India, arrived in Europe via Egypt. They first settled in Britain in the 16th and 17th centuries. Their descendents remain here and maintain their culture.

The slave trade created Black communities around Britain's ports, especially in London, Liverpool, Bristol and Cardiff. By the mid-18th century a layer of Black people who had won freedom from slavery established themselves as journalists and authors. In the late 1700s and early 1800s Asian servants were brought to Britain and Asian seafarers first settled. Throughout the 19th century, seafarers arrived from Yemen, Aden, Somalia, Indian and Malaysia and stayed. Britain's first mosque was built in Woking in 1889.

The campaign for Black representation in parliament grew prominently in the 1980s yet the first Black MP was elected in Central Finsbury (London) for the Liberals in 1892. From 1895-1906 an east London Conservative seat was held by Sir Mancherjee Mewanjee Bhownagree and in 1922 Shapurjee Saklatvala was elected as Labour's first Black MP.

European minorities

While conquering armies comprised the most significant white European immigration to Britain, European minorities also found a home here. The word 'refugee' entered the English language when the silk-weaving Huguenots, persecuted French protestants, arrived in London's East End in the late 1600s.

Jews first settled in Britain as early as 1066. Restricted to certain occupations mostly involving finance, they met with growing resentment. There were massacres and the remaining community was expelled in 1290. Their financial niche was taken over by new Italian immigrants.

Four centuries later Oliver Cromwell allowed Jews to return. From this time until the mid 19th century a trickle of Jewish immigrants came from Spain, Italy, Portugal, Germany and Holland. They faced discrimination and it was not until 1858 that a Jew was allowed to enter parliament.

Eastern European Jews came to England in much larger numbers in the 1890s settling largely in London's East End. Their new ghetto bordered the Chinese, Maltese and Somali quarters of East London.

The last group of Jewish migrants to settle in Britain were black Jews from the Indian subcontinent, who arrived in the early 1960s.

The 'aliens' have landed

Today the media defend themselves against accusations of racism in their coverage of immigration by drawing distinctions between 'genuine refugees', 'bogus asylum-seekers' and 'economic migrants'.

Refugees who are unable to provide sufficient documentation are regarded as 'bogus', despite the horrendous circumstances from which they may have fled. 'Genuine' refugees, are seen as worthy of support, while 'economic migrants' are condemned as people taking advantage. Most immigrant groups have comprised all of these. It is hard to separate them.

Pogroms

The 19th century Czarist Russian Empire included the largest Jewish community in the world. They were restricted to a few ways of earning their living and confined to an area called the 'Pale of Settlement'. Many were poor and starving. When Czar Alexander II was assassinated in 1881 by a group of radicals which included Jews there was a wave of pogroms – government encouraged mob attacks on Jewish villages and settlements - which left many Jews dead and wounded.

Jews faced an uncertain future. Some stayed to fight for political change but half of them (2.5 million) emigrated – mainly to the USA. Around 150,000, mostly poor, semi-skilled and unskilled workers, arrived in Britain.

From Ireland to Ukraine

Thousands of Irish immigrants arrived in the wake of the great hunger of 1845-49 during which 1.5 million people died of starvation and disease. They came to England to work on the railways, in the mills and the docks. They certainly met hostility and stereotyping but it paled by comparison to the furore that erupted against mass Jewish immigration.

Similarly, after the second world war Britain provided a home to half a million immigrants from Poland, Lithuania and Ukraine. They were recruited to factories rebuilding British industry after the war. Another wave of immigration brought many semi-skilled and unskilled Irish labourers. But these large white immigrations went almost unremarked upon, compared with the reaction towards Black immigrants from the Commonwealth and Dependent territories who arrived in the 1950s and 1960s.

Recruiting from the colonies

Britain's labour shortages continued into the 1950s and the government and employers wanted a ready source of cheap labour. They looked towards the colonies. Under the British Nationality Act of 1948, everyone born within Britain's colonies was considered a UK citizen. These citizens looked on Britain as the 'mother country'. When London Transport, the National Health Service and the British Hotel and Restaurant Associations actively invited people from the colonies to settle for work in Britain, many jumped at the opportunity to better themselves and provide new opportunities for their children. They had no idea that within a few years they would be facing a racist backlash.

Media frenzy

'Refugees get jobs; Britons get dole' is typical of newspaper headlines today. Their targets are often those fleeing war and catastrophe. This particular headline, though, actually appeared in June 1938 in the Sunday Pictorial. It was railing against Jewish refugees from Nazi Germany. At that time the Sunday Express, too, claimed: 'there is a big influx of foreign Jews� they are overrunning the country'.

The comment of press and politicians alike on immigration has often been lurid. 'Anyone who wants to realise what the peril really is has only to walk� in the East End of London. They will find these places literally infested with aliens', said the politician Sir Ernest Wild in 1919.

Scaremongering

The popular press still plays a powerful role in scaremongering. They label people who have taken the desperate step of uprooting themselves from their homes and communities to live in Britain, as 'scroungers', 'liars', 'cheats' and 'fraudsters', threatening to 'flood' or 'stampede' a 'small overcrowded island'.

Politicians who make anti-immigrant statements are guaranteed wide media coverage. The term 'swamping' entered the modern immigration debate in a BBC Panorama interview in 1978 when Conservative leader Margaret Thatcher said that British people 'feared that they might be swamped by people of a different culture.' These scare tactics had their roots much earlier though. In 1902 the Bishop of Stepney said Jews were 'swamping whole areas once populated by English people.

The media and politicians continually stirred up agitation against Jewish immigrants in the 1890s. They claimed that Jews were living in overcrowded unsanitary conditions, spreading disease, undermining sexual mores, undercutting British workers' wages and spreading political subversion.

An editorial in the Manchester Evening Chronicle in 1905 proposed 'that the dirty, destitute, diseased, verminous and criminal foreigner who dumps himself on our soil and rates simultaneously, shall be forbidden to land.' Claims that immigrants bring disease have been echoed ever since. Michael Howard recenty called for prospective immigrants to be subject to compulsory checks to ensure 'they are not a public health risk'.

Union members fearing competition from an influx of unskilled and semi-skilled labourers, passed resolutions in 1892, '94 and '95 demanding legislation to stem the flow of 'alien paupers'. The dockers' leader Ben Tillett said of the Jewish immigrants: 'You are our brothers and we will do our duty by you but we wish you had not come'.

The British Brothers

In 1901 a popular anti-alien movement was formed called The British Brothers League. It had the support of local politicians, clergy and newspaper owners. It organised marches, petitions and rallies where its speakers proclaimed, 'We will not have this country made the dumping ground for the scum of Europe. This is England not the dustbin of Russia and Austria.'

The tactic of organising provocative marches and rallies to terrorise immigrant areas was repeated by Oswald Mosley's British Union of Fascists in the 1930s ,the National Front in the 1970s, and more recently the British National Party.

Daily life for immigrants at the turn of the 20th century was the very opposite of how they were portrayed. Rather than taking other people's housing they lived in terribly cramped conditions; far from being scroungers they often worked 12-16 hour days. They did not take 'English workers' jobs but were mostly employed by Jewish sweatshop owners. Instead of lowering the morals of society they were dedicated to education and self-improvement. And while maintaining their own language and culture, they made strenuous efforts to ensure that they and their children spoke English.

The sensationalism of the press and certain politicians has helped mould a section of public opinion. It also legitimised the activities of racist political movements who marched to demand an end to immigration and a start to repatriation. In the 1960s Enoch Powell's calls to halt immigration were taken up by meat porters and dockers. They marched in their thousands to Trafalgar Square in support if his ideas. Today, far right political parties try to build on the anti-immigrant sentiments printed daily in the press.

Winners and losers

British immigration control was never designed to apply to all prospective settlers. It has always been directed against certain groups who are deemed 'undesirable'.

'Undesirables'

In 1905 'undesirable' meant those who 'appeared unable to support themselves' or 'likely to become a charge upon the rates'. It applied specifically to 'immigrant ships' – carrying the poorest immigrants. Jews arriving in small numbers on superior transport were allowed in. Asylum-seekers from religious or political persecution were supposedly exempted from the act but often their claims were ignored.

In 1906, 505 Jewish refugees were granted asylum. In 1908 the figure had fallen to 20 and by 1910, just 5. During the same period, 1,378 Jews, who had been permitted to enter as immigrants, had been rounded up and deported to their country of origin. The Aliens Act created 'internal controls', through which the Home Secretary could order deportations.

The new Immigration Service employed medical inspectors to substantiate reasons for refusal. People impoverished through economic discrimination were seeking to better themselves elsewhere but when they displayed the symptoms of poverty – treatable illnesses – they were turned away on medical grounds. Today the popular press frequently accuses refugees and asylum seekers of spreading diseases from tuberculosis to HIV/AIDS.

Few people defended Jewish immigration. That was largely left to the immigrants themselves. They tried unsuccessfully to influence parliament, the media, and the trade unions. The more established Jewish community, well integrated into British life, had little sympathy for their poorer cousins. Indeed there were Jewish members of the Royal Commission that recommended immigration control. The current Conservative leader, Michael Howard, uses his Jewish immigrant ancestry to justify quotas against others.

While the immigration of aliens – people from non-Commonwealth countries, was controlled, the British Subjects of the Empire could still move freely. That changed in fits and starts. After they obtained independence, Canada, Australia, New Zealand and South Africa developed racist immigration policies. These effectively excluded Black and Chinese people from elsewhere entering and settling. Meanwhile, white people from Britain could still settle anywhere in the Commonwealth. During the period of significant immigration from the Commonwealth to Britain, a greater number of white Britons left to settle elsewhere.

Politicians today deny taking a heartless attitude towards refugees and asylum seekers. There are around 15 million refugees in the world, mainly fleeing war, civil strife, homelessness, famine and disaster. Most of them leave one poor country to seek refuge in another. African and Asian countries struggling with debt and poverty absorb three out of every four refugees in the world. A tiny proportion get to America. The whole of Europe takes in around 20%.

Press and politicians alike hail Britain's 'proud record' of tolerance for past refugees. This comforting mythology is contradicted by the facts. Britain's harsh immigration laws prevented many Jews fleeing persecution firstly in Eastern Europe and then in Nazi Germany from finding refuge in Britain.

Who's British now?

The contribution of immigrants to British culture and life has been obscured. Tolerance has depended on the immigrants themselves keeping a low profile. They had to assimilate as much as possible into the dominant culture. White ethnic minority communities from across Europe have been absorbed almost without trace.

Post War Britain finally allowed itself to recognise Britain's contemporary multicultural reality, if not its history. African, Caribbean and Asian playwrights have flourished and Carnival has become a long-established feature of life in London and other towns and cities. Immigrants and their descendants have led a range of musical genres and influenced the language that goes with them.

Britain's high streets have a truly international flavour, reflecting immigrant cuisine. The consumer boom in washing machines in the 1950s converted a Chinese community centred on laundries to a community specialising in restaurants and take-aways. Bangladeshi, Indian, Chinese, Vietnamese, Turkish, Italian and Greek restaurants are common features across Britain.

The crucial service industries - health and public transport, continue to rely largely on immigrants. Their descendants too, make up much of their workforce. Many areas of commerce, especially the clothing industry and corner shops, have been developed by various immigrant groups.

Multiculturalism as an ideal was officially recognised in the 1970s. Since then local councils have devised ever more complex ethnic monitoring forms to gauge whether their services meet the needs of their diverse communities.

The latest developments are stretching these categories beyond their limits. The fastest growing 'ethnic group' are children of mixed parentage, reflecting diverse origins The melting pot is growing alongside stable and culturally distinct communities. Those who clamoured most loudly for an end to immigration have seen their demands increasingly met by governments. But at the same time as closing the gates, governments have had to acknowledge that multicultural Britain is here to stay.

Today the politicians and media are attacking the soft targets – desperate asylum seekers. They pour out the same tired arguments against them that were first used a century ago against Jewish communities and later against Black communities who are now firmly established here. Yet they cheer vociferously for the national football team, now largely composed of the descendents of those same immigrants.

Timeline


1894	First unsuccessful attempt to bring in legislation against Jewish immigration

1901	Royal Commission on Immigration, chaired by the Tory MP Major William Evans-Gordon

1901	British Brothers League formed

1905	Aliens Act passed. Created immigration officers with the power to control who entered Britain. Refuse entry to those considered 'undesirable'. Immigrants required to have a minimum of £5 on arrival

1906	Incoming Liberal government, which had earlier opposed the Act, enforced it

1914	Aliens Restriction Act passed in a few hours on the first day of World War

1919	'Temporary' Aliens Restriction Act reinforced

1930s	Jews fleeing Nazi persecution prevented from settling here unless they have a 'sponsor'

1938	'Kristallnacht' pogrom in Germany and Austria. Thousands of child refugees enter on the 'kindertransport'. Parents are denied entry and perish at the Nazis' hands.

1940s	Jews reaching Britain's shores during World Ward II often interned as 'enemy aliens'. Some share detention camps with interned Nazis

1948	'Windrush' ship brings 492 Jamaicans – the first major immigration from the Caribbean

1950	Labour Cabinet discusses 'the means of preventing any further increase in the coloured population of this country

1958	Anti-immigration Tory MP Cyril Osborne declares: 'It is time someone spoke out for the white man and I propose to do so'

1962	Labour Party opposes the Tories Commonwealth Immigrants Act limiting further immigration principally from the Caribbean

1965, 1968	Labour Government strengthens immigration laws against Commonwealth immigrants. Door remains wide open for white Britons who had emigrated to colonies, their children and grandchildren.

1968	British passport-holding Asians living in East Africa denied the right to settle in Britain

1971	New Immigration Act abolishes the categories of 'aliens' and 'British subjects'. Creates new categories of patrials and non-patrials. Patrials (UK born grandparent – largely white) can continue to settle; non-patrials including Caribbean and Asian communities, formerly British subjects, can no longer settle. Dependants of immigrants arriving before '71 Act is enforced have the right to settle but many are divided from their families for several years 'proving' their relationships for sceptical civil servants. Primary immigration ended. Future immigration linked to work permits for specific periods.

1993-2004	Series of Asylum Acts tightening controls on potential asylum seekers

2004	Increasing European integration enables workers from many parts of Europe, including eastern Europe, to seek temporary work in different EC countries, including the UK. Residence rights possible after repeated renewals of work permits.

RETURN TO TOP

Channel4.com Text Only